Electrical and electronic equipment is oftentimes constructed of circuit cards mounting components and which are interconnected by a circuit card mounting assembly to form the equipment. Typically, a circuit card mounting assembly is constructed with rows of shelves wherein each shelf is open at the front and arranged to receive a number of plug-in circuit cards. The back of each shelf may have cabling or printed wiring backplane structures arranged to receive each plug-in circuit card and interconnect the received circuit cards to form the electrical and electronic equipment.
Components mounted on each plug-in circuit card generate heat which is required to be dissipated to insure proper operation of the circuit card and other circuit cards plugged into the circuit card mounting assembly. In low power equipment applications, the shelves may be sufficiently spaced apart to allow the component generated heat to dissipate among the shelves without damage to the plug-in circuit cards mounted in the circuit card mounting assembly. Higher power equipment requires that cooling fans be installed in the circuit card mounting assembly to dissipate the component generated heat. In yet higher power equipment, cooling mediums are required to circulate throughout the circuit mounting assembly and around the mounted circuit cards to cool the circuit card mounted components.
A problem arises in that new types of components in addition to generating more heat are smaller in size thereby allowing more components to be mounted on a circuit card and which causes more heat to be generated by the circuit card. Accordingly, a need exists for a plug-in circuit card mounting assembly arranged to engage circuit cards as they are inserted into a circuit card mounting assembly and transfer the heat generated by the mounted circuit cards to heat transfer apparatus of the circuit card mounting assembly which is arranged to dissipate the circuit card component generated heat.